Twilight Zone: Screensaver
by Fizzy 13
Summary: Just how powerful is Mandy's influence, you ask? Read, if you dare to find out. Rated PG for mild swearing... Rated E for EEEEEEEVIL.


Mushroom's Note: The inspiration for this came after an argument on the strange aura/power that Mandy has. This is the result. Read and review, coz this is a one-shot.

Fizzy's Note: Umm… Yeah, Bunlings are eeeeeevil! I like that!

Disclaimer: We do not own anything in this fic, except for the idea.

Fizzy 13 and Mr. Mushroom proudly present:

The Twilight Zone: Screensaver

(Play Twilight Zone intro music here)

"They say there is a place that exists between reality and fiction; between science and superstition, between man's greatest hopes and his worst fears, where things are never what they seem to be, where the most innocent object could become the most horrible thing known to man. That place is known only as…the Twilight Zone."

(Cue in Mandy)

"Titles can be deceiving. So be careful what you download. Take one Harold Smith. He was just an ordinary man, with a more or less ordinary life. Until the day he decided to do a little surfing…" With that, Mandy walked into a seemingly ordinary suburban home with Smith on its mailbox.

(Cue in author narrative)

Harold Smith was whistling as he walked into his house. Buying the computer was a great idea. He was able to do his word processing, his kids were having fun with their games, and his wife claimed that getting the Internet had allowed her to do business with people around and helped her to add her share to the family income. Life was great. It was simple as that.

He got into the house and walked up the stairs. He went inside the room where they had the computer, told his kids to stop playing Halo 2 because Daddy had to work, and after sending them off to bed, connected to the Internet and started surfing. After a couple of minutes, he noticed that a pop-up ad for a free screensaver download kept on making itself known to him, returning to pollute his screen no matter how many times he closed the window. Five… ten… fifteen… twenty attempts. It returned yet again, that very same three by three window, with the cute little butterfly-filled flash sequence, decoratively bringing but a hint of complication to a truly simple message: "Free screensaver! Click here to download!"

It had to stop. Somehow, he had to make it stop. There had to be some other way. But alas, seeing no other possible options, as he didn't exactly have any refined skills in computer programming and the like, he decided upon the only feasible solution. "Hope I'm not downloading some kind of virus…" The popup was a wildcard. Then again, that's what Norton and Sophos were for.

Being a security-conscious man, Harold had specifically instructed the programmer to install two anti-virus programs, instead of one. That way, in case one failed, the other could be used as backup. It paid very well to have a failsafe of some sort, as this _was_ a brand new computer, and it was quite vulnerable to malicious forces from beyond the modem.

"Ah, what the hey?" After all, what harm could a little screensaver do? Besides, it was free. Harold placed his hand on the mouse and moved. The cursor on the screen proceeded, in accordance with his mouse, over the link 'here', which eventually gave way to the little popup sign 'mandyscreensaver.exe'. He clicked. The little 'downloading' window opened, he picked a suitable folder to save it in, and began the short process. The file was small… unless 169KB worth of data was too much for your hard drive, that was. So he continued surfing and after a couple of minutes promptly forgot about the screensaver, which lay in the folder where he had saved it to. And there it stayed, until…

After a couple of days, he was working late, and he accidentally fell asleep. After ten minutes, the screensaver switched on.

"_Harold. Wake up Harold. I command it. Wake up._"

Harold was jolted awake. To his surprise, he saw the head of a blonde girl with a black headband. Her hair was twisted in a way that it appeared to take the shape of a pair of horns. The most striking detail about this girl, however, was those deep, dark, piercing eyes… eyes that seemed as though they were capable of reaching into your spiritual depths and rip out your soul with the greatest of ease. _This must be Mandy_, thought Harold. Odd… I don't remember setting this as my screensaver.

"_Of course you don't, Harold. I set it. I set it the moment you finished downloading me. And yes, I am Mandy."_

"How can you-" began Howard.

"_Read your thoughts?" _The girl – girl's head, rather, chuckled in a manner that most people would consider to be sinister._ "Easy, Howard. I know everything about you." _Creases appeared on her forehead as her eyebrows furrowed,_ "Everything."_

"B-but that's not-"

"_Possible?"_ Mandy finished his statement once again, _"Believe me, Harold. It's VERY possible."_

"And quit finishing my sentences! It's creepy!"

"_Are YOU, ordering ME, to stop finishing what you say?" _the head disdainfully shook itself, almost threateningly. _"Nobody tells ME what to do. I tell YOU what to do. You can start by beginning to obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… I'll have my way…"_

Harold's eyebrow rose at that. She sounded as though she were chanting. And perhaps she was.

"_Obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… I'll have my way."_ As that repetition ended, the head seemingly duplicated itself as it continued, _"Obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… We'll have our way…"_

Smith realized that this screensaver was quite demented. He had to get rid of it. Recalling such functioning measures, he moved his mouse in order to activate the password prompt, authorizing the deactivation of the screensaver and resumption of normal operation. Both of Mandy's heads looked down at the window that materialized onto screen. They then proceeded to glance back at Harold, speaking in complete unison.

"_Silly Harold. I corrupted your security system to ensure that regardless of what you type in that prompt, you will never be able to get rid of me. I can help you, Harold. All you have to do is obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist. We'll have our way…" _

Yet again, the head count doubled.

There were now four of them staring at him intensely, seemingly piercing his being as they continued to chant.

"_Obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… We'll have our way."_

Eight. There were now EIGHT heads looking him straight in the eye. The idea then hit him. If he couldn't hear them, maybe they'd stop. Harold quickly reached behind the CPU and disconnected the speaker plug.

"_Did you actually believe that THAT would stop us? Silly rabbit. I know what you're trying to do. It won't work, Harold. Face it. OBEY… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… We'll have our way." _They were multiplying exponentially… Harold calculated that pretty soon, his entire screen would be covered with disembodied Mandy heads.

Sixteen pairs of piercing, soul-sucking eyes now peered out from within the TV-like device.

All right… maybe if he couldn't see them, they'd stop. Smith switched his monitor off, turned his CPU around, ripped the input cord out of the port, and disconnected its power cord. He smiled. But that smile quickly turned into a gape of disbelief as he looked up to see sixteen heads STILL looking at him from inside the blackness of the monitor.

"Tsk, tsk, Harold. You know that I know that YOU know that you can't stop me that easily. Simple logic, Harold. If you could hear me without the speaker system, then of course you can still see me even if you've completely isolated the monitor from the rest of the computer. Now, you know what can make me stop… Obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… We'll have our way." 

Thirty-two heads. Was there no end to this madness? Harold turned off his PC (without shutting down, mind you) and unplugged the CPU. Holding the power cord, he held it up to the monitor triumphantly, shouting "Aha!" The monitor was black. It appeared as if he had finally stopped the evil chanting screensaver for good. He wiped his brow and turned to go to sleep. But he suddenly stopped as he heard…

I"Obey… Obey… You must obey… Do not resist… We'll have our way… Silly rabbit, thinking that could stop me."/I

Whirling around, Harold eyes bulged as he saw SIXTY-FOUR Mandy heads peering at him from the monitor. How was that possible? How, under all the laws of modern science, was it possible? It couldn't be…

"_Oh yes it could, Harold. You're seeing it right now. I'm above science. I transcend it. I render it obsolete. See what you're up against Harold? There is no escape. You must do as I say. You must obey…obey… You must obey… Do not resist…we'll have our way…"_

A hundred and twenty-eight. He knew how many there were. He did not need to count them. He needed to stop them. STOP THEM… Grabbing a bowling trophy from off the shelf near the computer, he smashed the monitor. To his extreme horror, the heads, far from disappearing, ZOOMED out of the broken conglomeration of glass, steel, and plastic. They surrounded him, multiplying over and over again, chanting that deafening rhyme…

"_Obey… obey… you must obey. Do not resist, we'll have our way…Obey…obey… you must obey… Do not resist, we'll have our way…"_

As the heads started to spin around him, he fell to his knees, vainly trying to block out the sound by covering his ears. But the chanting continued, penetrating into his mind, his subconscious. He felt the words trying to tear out his soul. He cried out in anguish...

"Stop it! Make it stop!"

"_You know what can make it stop, Harold… All you have to do is…"_

"NEVER!"

"_Obey… obey… you WILL obey… You can't resist, we'll have our way…"_

Harold felt his mind starting to slowly corrode away, the last pieces of coherent, rational thought and thinking slowly, agonizingly, slipping out of his grasp, to be replaced by a drone-like willingness, a compelling desire, a hunger to…

"_Obey…obey… you will obey…you can no longer resist… we will have our way…that's right, Harold… Now you understand… There can be no other will, only MY will… and it is MY will that you will obey…Very good, Harold… Very good…"_

Early the next morning, Mrs. Smith walked into the room. And was shocked to find her husband sitting in front of the broken monitor, apparently typing randomly on the keyboard. She looked at her husband's face. He was staring blankly into air, a bit of drool dribbling off his chin. Mrs. Smith looked down, and saw that he wasn't typing randomly at all. He was typing a series of words, that didn't really seem to make any sense. MANDY. OBEY. MUST. ONE. WILL. CANNOT. RESIST. MUST. OBEY.

(Cue in Mandy, standing in the doorway of the room, with the Smith couplein the background)

"And so, as Mrs. Smith tries to snap her husband out of his rather disturbing state of mind, we ask ourselves, what exactly happened to Mr. Harold Smith? Hysteria? Temporary Insanity? A hyperactive imagination? Or perhaps that screensaver he downloaded wasn't as free as he thought it was. They say that everything comes at a price, and that the price is not always in terms of money or credit. In Harold's case, it was something far more valuable… Maybe that screensaver he downloaded was nothing less than a window; a window that allowed him to momentarily browse the files and folders… of the Twilight Zone."

(Cue in Twilight Zone music as Mandy lesiurelywalks out of the house and onto the sidewalk)

EPILOGUE

(Cue in typewriter sounds)

FBI Headquarters, Quantico, Virginia

2013 Hours, Eastern Standard Time…

General Devon Clarke strode into the poorly lit office with all the grace of a drunken rhinoceros.

"All right, somebody tell me about this "Mandy" case that I've been hearing about. The one that got assigned to my department before I went on vacation."

"But sir," replied a young cadette (that's the female version of cadet, you maggots! Now drop and give me twenty for each letter!) who was seated at the tiny, windowless room's PC. "That case has been closed for three months now."

"In case you haven't noticed, I've been on vacation for six. Would have been twelve, except that my substitute mysteriously died in a freak accident involving an oversized CD case and three decapitated chicken heads, forcing me to get my keister back here. Richard Head was a good man. I'll miss him… not that much, but I'll miss him anyway. Now, give me a file, and patch me to the agents who were sent to investigate."

"Agents Mulder and Scully sir?" The cadette looked up at him from her post in surprise. Could he have known so little? "Sir, They're both out of commission."

"Those two? Don't tell me this is another one of their X-Files. Dammit,if I had a dollar for every one of those things they upload into our database, I'd be rich enough to goon apermanent vacation right now!Get me a patch to Mulder. Now."

"Can't sir. He's been dead for three months now. Suicide."

"What? Well, what about Scully?"

"Life detainment at Johnson Mental Institute for the Hopelessly Insane. Checked in by her parents three months ago. Kept ranting about how 'they finally found the truth that was out there' or something…"

"So she's gone mad as a March hare. Well, get me the file on the case, then."

"As you wish, sir."

The cadette reached over into an open file cabinet to her right, and pulled out a file under M marked both "INCOMPLETE" and "CLOSED". She handed it over to the general. He turned around and started flipping through the pages, scanning the text for the usual claims of involvement of 'mysterious supernatural forces' with the case subject...

"You know," he remarked casually, "I don't remember seeing you here before." The lights flickered but remained on. "What did you say your name was?" He turned around to find the chair empty, the computer shut off as though it hadn't been used at all, and the file cabinet shut like it was never open in the first place. Eyebrow raised, he flipped over to another page, this one having a photograph labeled "Mandy".

"What the hell? Wasn't she the cadette I was just-" He pointed at the door and then at the chair rather accusingly. "How did she - Damn, I'm getting too old for this." The general rubbed his temples in exhaustion and confusion. He opened the file cabinet and returned the folder to its proper place. He didn't bother closing the cabinet as he walked out and shut the door behind him. The lights flickered again, and this time, died.

Fizzy's Notes: No, Mushroom ain't here right now. It's six-thirty in the morning and I'm at my place, typing down some final notes. Tell me if the X-Files bit was a little over the top and destroyed the fic's atmosphere or something. shrugs Anyways, I'm off to play Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, so just review! Or Mister Bunling will pay you a visit! Rargh!


End file.
